Cetshwayo kaMpande

Cetshwayo kaMpande (1826-8 February 1884) was King of the Zulu Kingdom from 1873 to 1879, succeeding Mpande and preceding Dinuzulu kaCetshwayo. Cetshwayo famously led the Zulu during the 1879 Anglo-Zulu War, scoring a major victory over the British at the Battle of Isandlwana before the British stormed his capital of Ulundi and forced him to surrender. In 1883, the British restored Cetshwayo as a client king in their South Africa colony, but Cetshwayo was overthrown during a Zulu civil war.

Biography
Cetshwayo kaMpande was born in the Zulu Kingdom in 1826, the son of the Zulu king Mpande and the half-nephew of King Shaka. In 1856, he killed his younger brother in battle and massacred his supporters (including five other brothers), leading to Cetshwayo becoming his father's heir. In 1873, following his father's death a year earlier, Cetshwayo became King of the Zulus, and he established Ulundi as his capital. He expanded his army, equipped his impis with muskets, and incited rebellions against the Afrikaners of South Africa, forcing the Afrikaners to turn to the British for protection.

In 1879, the British high commissioner in South Africa Henry Bartle Frere demanded that Cetshwayo disband his army following a border clash between the Zulus and the British Army; he correctly anticipated that Cetshwayo would reject Britain's unreasonable demands, using this as grounds to start the Anglo-Zulu War. Lord Chelmsford and 4,000 British and Natalian troops marched into Zulu territory, only for 1,700 British troops to be overwhelmed and massacred by Cetshwayo's army at the Battle of Isandlwana on 22 January. That same day, however, Cetshwayo's brother Dabulamanzi kaMpande's 4,000-strong army was defeated by a small British contingent of 139 troops at the Battle of Rorke's Drift, and British reinforcements under Garnet Wolseley arrived shortly after. In July, the British assaulted Ulundi with artillery and Gatling guns, and, in a 45-minute battle, the Zulus were routed and slaughtered. Cetshwayo was forced to surrender, and he was exiled to Cape Town and later to London.

In 1882, with the onset of a Zulu civil war, the British attempted to restore Cetshwayo as a client king. However, Cetshwayo was wounded in battle on 22 July 1883 as his rivals attacked Ulundi, and he moved to Eshowe, where he died in February 1884, presumably of a heart attack, but possibly from poison. Cetshwayo was the last king of an independent Zulu nation.